ownCloud
Shares rank 9 of 14 file sync apps by recommenders
Recommended as an easy-to-run, self-hosted file sync server that people say just works. Main caveats are update trouble and some features behind a paywall.
Recommended as an easy-to-run, self-hosted file sync server that people say just works. Main caveats are update trouble and some features behind a paywall.
18 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 50%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy to set up and run
“hosting your own OwnCloud/NextCloud is pretty easy. It just works.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500€/Year)” “It was nice and easy, and I didn't have any problems with it.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future” Simple option for a VPS
“worst case you can run up a VPS with Owncloud or something”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Time to start de-Appling” “why not set up owncloud on the hetzner machine?”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Abandoned free edition, paywalled features
“The good OwnCloud is abandoned, and instead they released some meme enterprise nonsense.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future” “Some features are locked behind a proprietary paywall.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future” Messy codebase, PHP concerns
“owncloud/nextcloud were a huge mess, for long time”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Opencloud – An alternative to Nextcloud written in Go” “how much of a hot PHP mess it is”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Mysteries of Dropbox: Property-Based Testing of a Distributed Sync Service [pdf]” Hard to keep updated, small company
“They're committed to security updates for 10 but it's a small company.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future” “I always had terrible trouble keeping it (and before it, Owncloud) updated”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future”
Other file sync apps people recommend
The four most recommended other file sync apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 14 file sync apps, rankedWhat people said
18 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it gets tiring pretty fast”
“They're committed to security updates for 10 but it's a small company.”
“It was nice and easy, and I didn't have any problems with it.”
“The good OwnCloud is abandoned, and instead they released some meme enterprise nonsense.”
“Some features are locked behind a proprietary paywall.”
“I always had terrible trouble keeping it (and before it, Owncloud) updated”
“they all felt either too heavy or limited to me”
“None ever stuck with me, for various reasons I cannot remember.”
“ownCloud (and NextCloud today) aren't slow because it's PHP.”
“how much of a hot PHP mess it is”
“hosting your own OwnCloud/NextCloud is pretty easy. It just works.”
“Exclusively owncloud is entirely impractical.”
“NextCloud/OwnCloud and other options can deliver some of it, but all of it is harder”
“why not set up owncloud on the hetzner machine?”
“OwnCloud archives them for me automatically, from where they get sucked into my regular backups.”
“worst case you can run up a VPS with Owncloud or something”
“owncloud/nextcloud were a huge mess, for long time”
“I run normal owncloud right now over nextcloud as it avoided a few hiccups that I had.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.